Historical Context By David V. Baker Summary

The black population in America has always been oppressed and abused in some sort of way, but the depth of the abuse that black females have had to deal with never really seems to take the spotlight. Black Female Executions in Historical Context by David V. Baker and Drug Offenses, Gender, Ethnicity, and Nationality Women in Prison in England and Wales by Janice Joseph both look in depth into the amount of unfairness and inequality that black females have faced in the past and present. Baker starts his explanation on just how black women have been treated unfairly by starting from slavery and going into the modern era. Baker specifically focuses on moments in which black women have gotten revenge against black slaveholders by murdering them or someone close to them. Although gruesome Baker notes that the women where treated unfairly and not considered victims of abuse of white society. The form of treatment they endured in slaver, such as rape, whippings and death, doesn’t end when slavery ends. They continue to be raped and are incarcerated at an alarming rate. This criminalization of black females continues into the modern era where even having a mental handicap does not excuse you from being sentenced to death. This unfair incarnation of the black female population then continues to be discussed in Joseph’s journal. Joseph is taking into
Baker’s Black Female Executions in Historical Context seemed to have too many sources and not enough evaluation. I would have like to read more about what Baker thought about the events he wrote about. Instead it seemed like it was just a lot of information being thrown out at once. Joseph’s journal actually had the opposite effect mostly because I wish she spoke more about how black and white females get sentence differently for the same crime. It would have been great support for her overall